Battle Scars
by runaway ballista
Summary: [RND] Raidou wears his scars like a badge of honor. Tonbo thinks it's a load of bullshit. Tonbo centric fic.


Tobitake Tonbo is an exceedingly minor character in Naruto and only appears a few scarce times during the chuunin exam. However, I always thought he was kind of interesting, and after reading his databook article, I decided to write a Tonbo-centric fic. (For those who don't remember, Tonbo was the examiner whose head is covered in bandages and had a cigarette in his mouth.) I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** Naruto is belong to Kishimoto Masashi. I just borrow it sometimes.

**Notes:** Warning for graphic language. Also keep in mind that this isn't character bashing toward Raidou; I myself love the character. This is just how Tonbo feels about him.

**Battle Scars**

Everyone in Konoha knows who Namiashi Raidou is. If they don't know him by name, then they know him by face - by that great ugly twisted scar covering the left half of his face, running down his neck to bite at his shoulder. They all know him, even if only by that mark, and most of them know the story behind it - that he nearly lost half his face in a desperate battle on an A-ranked mission, the victim of a vicious fire jutsu. Even if they can't help but avert their eyes or just plain stare in grotesque awe, they all look upon that scar as a symbol of his dedication to the village, a badge of honor - a battle scar.

Tonbo thinks it's a load of bullshit.

In fact, he knows it is. He knows because he was _there_. Funny, he thinks, funny how no one really seems to remember that Raidou wasn't the only survivor of the mission - that Tonbo wasn't among the two dead they'd left behind in the wake of that firefight. That Tonbo had been on the mission _at all_.

He watches Raidou walk around with his friends - his _friends_, and Tonbo spits out the word as if it's dirtied his mouth - and sometimes he looks so down Tonbo can't help but liken him to some kicked puppy. It's like his whole life is ruined because some enemy fucked up his face - like suddenly he can't go back to how things were in the slightest. Just because some fire jutsu scratched him a little bit.

Tonbo thinks he'd like to teach Raidou a lesson or two about life-altering disfigurations. He sees Raidou go around with Genma, sitting at bars all dejected like he can't pick up girls anymore, but the girls he can pick up just aren't fucking _good_ enough for him. Tonbo sees him, he sees it all right, and it just damn near pisses him off. Raidou thinks he's a real fuckup, real fuckin' ugly, but Tonbo knows better. He hears the handful of girls talking quietly in his wake, not about how disfigured he is. They never talk about that. Raidou, he decides, is just too damn stupid to see.

Tonbo knows what it's _really_ like. He knows what it's _really _like to lose that something, to lose all hopes of ever getting laid ever again. Because Tonbo remembers the time he managed to snag a woman after he emerged from the hospital, freshly bundled up in bandages all over his face. He couldn't see worth a shit without the chakra-powered visual access implant, but he could smell and hear like a fucking bloodhound. That night he got drunk off his ass, properly shitfaced, and wound up with a woman in his bed before the night was through.

It was almost shameful, really, how much the alcohol really dulled his senses. He couldn't move quite fast enough to stop her when she went to peel the bandages away from his face. He couldn't stop the look of horror and disgust that spread over her face like a disease of decay, bleeding into every line and every dip of her. She screamed - screamed at _him_ - and then the bitch ran from his house after vomiting all over his bedroom floor. After that, Tonbo couldn't get a woman to look twice his way.

Raidou, he decides, doesn't know shit about battle scars. For all he thinks he's disfigured, it's just an ugly mark on his face. It didn't _do_ anything to him. He didn't fucking go _blind_.

Tonbo never had good eyes to begin with, but that mess of a fire jutsu had burned the eyes right out of his fucking skull. There was so much damage, he knows, that it's a damn near miracle he's still alive. They'd given him something to replace that lost sense of sight - an implant, some fake as shit eye, that he can only see with when he pumps chakra into it. He hates it.

Tonbo's much worse off than Raidou is, and he's damn sure of it. He can't say so, and he doesn't quite know why, but he knows it's true anyway.

And still, he watches them. He watches Raidou and his _friends_, every fucking day, watches that godforsaken kicked puppy look on Raidou's face every time Genma mentions his little boyfriend, every time someone makes eyes at him. Raidou's too fucking busy wallowing in his own self-pity to notice the ones making _eyes_ at him - to notice Tonbo. He just keeps on thinking he's so bad off, and everyone else keeps on thinking he's some great man wearing his battle scars like a badge of honor.

Fuck 'em, says Tonbo, and he lights up another cigarette. Just fuck 'em all.


End file.
